I WAS NOT ABLE TO CATCH the details, but it was Jim Paredes on TV lashing out at Panky of Pinoy Dream Academy (PDA), telling the Cebuana scholar that what she uttered the day before was the most stupid thing.
The stupid thing was Panky's idea that sounded like, “suicide is the highest form of art”. The comment was the result of the “set up” made by PDA itself with no apparent purpose but for the scholars to hurt each other. We could imagine Paredes saying, “stupid, stupid, stupid…” referring to the suicide thing, but he could also be referring to the stupid thing the TV network did for the scholars to injure each others' feelings. Paredes' reaction summed up the production's fear that a suicide of one of its scholars might dampen a very profitable TV program.
These thoughts came to mind when the local radio reported last week two suicides in just a day. In the face of this reality, people ask questions like, why would people take their own lives? How should we react to suicides? How could this stupid act be prevented?
We leave to psychologists and behavioral scientists the more difficult task of explaining the phenomenon of a human being taking his own life. Like everybody else, after muttering such words as “stupid, stupid…” in condemnation, we are immediately gripped with compassion for the victims. Especially so, that almost every victim speaks of “being not loved” as reason for copping out of this world.
“Nobody loves me… I will go out and eat worms...” These are words from a child who thinks nobody loves him. His thoughts are indications of morbid things to come.
Cases of suicides are symptoms of a sick society, a society suffering from great hunger for love or afflicted with some kind of cultural aberration. People are too busy earning a living that the glitter of money led them to treat one another as inanimate objects. They forgot their main task of loving. They were too engrossed with their personal concerns sidelining the people who are in great need of their loving presence.
Victims of suicides – the moment they were committing their act of self-annihilation – are not in their right minds and proper faculties to make correct and responsible decisions. That is why they are called “stupid…” because they did not know what they were doing. Jesus of Nazareth said, “Forgive them for they do not know…”
I heard of kindly priests who blessed, prayed and celebrated Mass inside the Church for victims of suicides despite the ambivalent stand of Church teachings on the matter. Those who took their own lives are victims and they must be treated and judged as victims.
In no way should such stand encourage suicide. That would be another stupid thing to do. Instead, it should encourage compassion and peaceful acceptance and healing on the part of the family of the victim. It should encourage us to love more so that no other suicides from henceforth will rock our collective conscience.
But more than that, every suicide is a condemnation of a society that loves less, that is cruel to its members, that judges unfairly and without compassion, that does not understand and provide for the needs of its members for love, acceptance and belongingness.
Families are the first line of defense against this “stupid thing to do…” It is in the home where the sacredness and supreme value of life must be nurtured, where strength of character founded in faith in a loving God is cherished, where the virtue of hope is our breastplate against despair, misery and desolation.
Want to atone for society's sin against suicide victims? Let us be more compassionate to others, and love them more.
(Mithi Malaya, 23, is now working with a government-organized NGO mandated to protect, rehabilitate and develop the environment in the Allah Valley Landscape of Southern Mindanao. She wrote this piece four years ago).
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